The great thing about sales is that adding extra effort does not always improve selling. Why this is great is that there are very clear and practical things that we can do to immediately improve results.

1. Effectively Qualify Prospects

It can be easy to get trapped into the direction of trying to sell to everybody and sometimes even to anybody that will hear your pitch. The problem with this is that not only to do some prospects fit better than others with what you have to offer, but some prospects have just about a 0% probability of buying from you so any time spent on them is completely wasted.

If we improve our ability to qualify prospects to identify those that are very qualified and those that are unqualified, we can increase our time either spent with prospects that have potential to purchase and decrease out time spent on prospects that only stand to waste our time. This simple change can have an immediate impact on sales.

2. Communicate Value

The main thing that prospects care about is how a vendor can help make their life better. And it in B 2 B sales, this means how a vendor can help the prospect to increase revenue, decrease costs, or decrease risk. By improving your ability to communicate how you can help with those in terms of the value that you have to offer, you will stand to improve selling.

3. Prepare for Objections

We are guaranteed to run up against a number of different objections during the sales cycle. The good news is that there are really only between 10 to 15 objections that we stand to consistently face. With that being case, we can prepare for how to best respond to these in anticipation for facing them while in the field. Attention on this preparation step can have a direct improvement on sales results.

4. Trial Close

Closing does not just happen at the end of the sales cycle as we should be trail closing every step of the way. Trial closing is checking in with the prospect to identify what their thoughts are. If you do this periodically during the sales cycle, you will have valuable information and this can help you to more effectively manage what information you share and what direction you go and this can improve selling.

5. Build Rapport

Prospects are more likely to buy from people they like so building rapport can help to improve selling. Not only will rapport help with the close rate, but it will also help with management of the sales cycle as a prospect is more likely to respond and be cooperative with a sales person that they feel comfortable with and have a level of rapport with.

6. Uncover Pain

When trying to improve selling, it is critical to uncover pain. Pain is something that is not working well or could be working better for the prospect. Pain is important as if there is no real pain, there is no real reason to change. If there is no reason to change, the prospect might not be qualified. If the prospect is not qualified, we should not spend a lot of our valuable time selling to them. As a result, it is critical to uncover pain to improve results.